SF Cyclotouring

6/18/2007

As per the last entry, I recently re-shod my Fuji CX with its mixed-terrain tires, 700x38 WTB All-Terrainasarus. These are the same set of tires I ran last year. When I stuck them back on the bike and remounted the wheels, I was surprised to find that the rear wheel is now off-center, the non-drive side of the wheel is closer to the chainstay by 1-2mm than the non-drive side. I'm perplexed because -- to the best of my recollection -- this wasn't a problem last year, and again, these are the same tires and wheels I've used before. No significant crashes, no rear wheel wobbles, no bent rear axle, nothing. It's not a dish-issue because flipping the wheel around results in the same misalignment. I did the string-test on the frame last night and it checks out straight there, too. Even tried a different wheel, same deal.

Tweaking the wheel a little before clamping down on the QR straightens things out enough, but I'm just utterly confounded as to why this is happening -- since I'm damn sure this wasn't a problem last season. And when you're running fat tires in a CX frame (I've only got ~2mm clearance at the chainstays as it is), every millimeter counts!

3 Comments:

You might see if any decent local shop has a set of dropout alignment tools. There's a photo of th current model on the Park site. Most shops that have been around for a while have a setand most shop wrenches have no idea what they are for...

I've had a similar problem in an old road bike, and found that the dropouts were misaligned. Worth a check. Best of luck!